Gang-related organised crime in the United Kingdom is concentrated around the cities of London, Manchester and Liverpool and regionally across the West Midlands region, south coast and northern England, according to the Serious Organised Crime Agency. With regard to street gangs the cities identified as having the most serious gang problems, which accounted for 65% of firearm homicides in England and Wales, were London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.Tackling Gangs Action Plan Press Release | Attorney General Glasgow in Scotland also has a historical gang culture with the city having as many teenage gangs as London, which had six times the population, in 2008.
In the early part of the 20th century, the cities of Leeds, Bristol, Bradford, and more prominently Keighley, and Nottingham all commanded headlines pertaining to street gangs and suffered their share of high-profile firearms murders. Sheffield, which has a long history of gangs traced back to the 1920s in the book "The Sheffield Gang Wars", along with LeicesterGang culture taking root in Leicester | Crimestoppers UK is one of numerous urban centres seen to have an emerging or re-emerging gang problem.
In November 2007, a major offensive against gun crime committed by gangs in Birmingham, Liverpool, London and Manchester led to 118 arrests. More than 1,000 police officers were involved in the raids. Not all of the 118 arrests were gun related. Others were linked to drugs, prostitution and other crimes. Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said it showed the police could "fight back against gangs".Major crackdown on guns culture BBC News, Thursday, 29 November 2007
In the 2000s, Britain's street gangs in certain inner city areas such as London and Manchester became influenced by America's Crips and Bloods.Crips and Bloods: How Britain's mobs are imitating US gangs , The Times, July 11, 2008Ross Kemp on Gangs, Season 2, Episode 5 (Teenage Gangs of South London) This was evidenced by identification with colours, hand signs, graffiti tags and in some cases gang names, for example Old Trafford Cripz and Moss Side Bloods or 031 (O-Tray-One) Bloods gang and ABM (All Bout Money) Crips. This phenomenon has since declined during the 2010s.Boy 15 stabbed to death and 5 more hurt in gang battle | London Evening Standard
Debate persists over the extent and nature of gang activity in the UK.
As a result of austerity reforms, there are fewer public spaces set aside as of 2018 for the purpose of keeping young people off the street, such as youth centres. As a result, some children as young as 9 begin to carry weapons and turn to gang activities for safety, or to provide for their families through drug trafficking.'A lost generation': How austerity has created vacuum being filled by drug gangs exploiting children The Independent
"Scuttlers" and rise of gang culture The Factory Act 1833 regulated child labour in the UK: children could no longer work in factories. Children were now spending more time on the streets while the rest of their families went to work all day. The lack of an extra stable source of income for families led to an increase in petty crimes among working-class youths in the late 19th century. As children spent more time with siblings and neighbours on the street, pranks became commonplace and were viewed as devious attempts to outsmart authority. Along with pranking, petty crime among older teenagers was also on the rise.
Because older teenagers could not earn enough money to support their families, especially in the absence of one parent—which was common—many resorted to stealing. Food and cigarettes were the most common forms of property that were stolen in the late 19th century. These small crimes and this culture of pranks added to the underlying resistance to authority that existed among working-class youths who had no other outlets to control their environment.
The early groups in the 1840s were family oriented and were typically composed of brothers, sisters, and neighbours. While petty crime rose everywhere during the 19th century in England, individual crimes differed from city-to-city and even persisted in rural areas. Gangs were not unique to deprived areas, and many arose in many working-class towns that were flourishing from trade. Early forms of gangs were based upon territory and locality rather than certain ethnic or religious affiliations, which tended to be the defining characteristics of gangs in the early 20th century.
Many of the names of early British gangs included titles of local areas and streets, such as the Bengal Tigers who originated from Bengal Street in Manchester. The idea of “hooliganism” was used to describe these types of crimes committed by working-class youth, and drew great concern from the press and middle class during this time. "Scuttlers" was the specific term given to the perpetuators of these early, petty crimes. These factions were not highly organised, and most people drifted in and out of membership. The early development of petty crime with groups forming an identity for themselves through names and clothes helped create the framework for more organised crime groups that gained great notoriety throughout the early 20th century.
Gangs in major urban centres Belfast Northern Ireland had over 150 active criminal gangs in 2014. In Belfast, there were estimated to be approximately 80 gangs in 2003, most nominally sectarian, engaged in racketeering across the city.
An investigation in 2014 found that some gangs in Belfast were particularly hostile towards non-white residents of the city, with numerous cases of racially motivated violence, intimidation and extortion having been reported.
Gangs in Belfast have been involved in people smuggling and human trafficking. Although the vice industry was previously mostly on the street, in recent years it has moved indoors to residential homes and hotels and formed closer links to organised crime networks. Trafficking gangs in Belfast, as in the rest of Northern Ireland, tend to be of Chinese or Eastern European origin, utilising local people as facilitators in their network.
In 2014, three nights of violence in East Belfast led to the Police Federation for Northern Ireland stating: "The gang culture has to be broken up so that people can go about their business without fear of being struck by a missile or intimidated."
(See below for information about sectarian gangs in Northern Ireland associated with The Troubles)
Birmingham The Peaky Blinders were a criminal gang based in Birmingham, England, in the late 19th century and, to a lesser extent, in the early 20th century. Philip Gooderson, author of The Gangs of Birmingham, states that the Peaky Blinders originated as a specific gang, but the term later became a generic label. An earlier gang known as the Cheapside Sloggers had evolved in the 1870s, and the term "Sloggers" (meaning fighters) had already become a generic local label for street gangs when the Peaky Blinders emerged at the end of the century in Adderley Street, in the Bordesley and Small Heath areas, which was an extremely deprived slum section of Birmingham at the time. The Peaky Blinders were distinguished by their sartorial style, unlike earlier gangs. Notable members included David Taylor (imprisoned for carrying a gun at 13 years old), "baby-faced" Harry Fowles, Ernest Haynes and Stephen McNickle.
Early in the 20th century, one of the Birmingham gangs known as the Brummagem Boys (Brummagem being slang for Birmingham) began to spread their criminal network from the streets of Birmingham to around the country. Helped by greatly improved transport, for the first time, regional gangs were able to expand beyond the streets that bred them. The new connecting railway between Birmingham and London meant they could target the racecourse riches of the country's capital.
Following the Handsworth riots in 1985, young people banded together in groups which soon turned to petty crime and robbery. By the late 1980s, the Johnson Crew, named after their Johnsons Café hang-out, controlled the drugs market and nightclub security across some parts of Birmingham.
After a fall-out between members of the Johnson Crew, the Burger Bar Boys formed, taking their name from a Soho Road fast-food joint. This began a violent feud between the Johnsons and the Burger Bar Boys, which was resolved in a truce instigated by Matthias "Shabba" Thompson in 2010, with assistance from documentary maker Penny Woolcock. The process of forming the truce was captured in the Channel 4 documentary, One Mile Away. Following the truce, violent crime fell by 50% in the B6 postcode area and 30% in B21.
The increasingly collaborative relationship between the two gangs has led to some in the media describing them as more akin to a "super gang", seeking to establish a greater national network of organised crime rather than controlling their post-code areas. Other reports suggest both gangs are effectively inactive, and there is no "super gang".
However, 20 shootings in mid-2015 onwards were linked to the feud between the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew, suggesting any truce is no longer active and the gang rivalry has been renewed.
See also:
Peaky Blinders Birmingham Boys Murder of Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis
Glasgow The history of Glasgow gangs can be traced back to the 18th century, although the first media reference to Glasgow gangs was not until the 1870s, with the acknowledgement of the Penny Mobs. It has been suggested that the rise in Glasgow gangs from the 1850s was a result of an influx in Irish immigrationGlasgow Gangs which included those from traditional Irish fighting gangs such as the Caravats and Shanavests. By the 1920s many Glasgow gangs were widely viewed as fighting gangs rather than criminal gangs, although there were widespread reports of extortion and protection rackets, particularly in the city's East End and South Side. By the 1930s, Glasgow had acquired a reputation throughout Britain as a hotbed of gang violence and was regarded at the time as Britain's answer to Chicago, the epicenter of America's most violent warfare between organized crime. The gangs at this time were also referred to as Glasgow razor gangs, named after their weapon of choice.
One of Glasgow's most notorious gangs were the Billy Boys, a sectarian anti-Catholic gang, who were formed in 1924 by William Fullerton after he was attacked by a group of Catholic youths. Many gangs in the East End of Glasgow (such as the Billy Boys' rivals, the Norman Conks) were both sectarian and territorial, whereas in other districts they were primarily territorial.